


Just Hold Me 'Til I Fall Asleep

by DarkShadows_EvilMind



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Frottage, Gay Will Byers, M/M, Mike Wheeler Has Issues, Minor Eleven | Jane Hopper/Mike Wheeler, More Specifically Abandonment Issues, Non-Explicit, One-Sided Will Byers/Mike Wheeler, Or Is It?, Period-Typical Homophobia, Possibly Bisexual Mike Wheeler, Possibly Internalized Homophobia, Post-Season/Series 02, Pre-Season/Series 03, Underage Kissing, Unintentional Sexual Coercion, Will Byers Loves Mike Wheeler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-02-23 10:55:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23710375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkShadows_EvilMind/pseuds/DarkShadows_EvilMind
Summary: Mike will do just about anything to keep from losing someone he cares about. Even if he doesn't exactly want to...
Relationships: Will Byers/Mike Wheeler
Comments: 5
Kudos: 66





	Just Hold Me 'Til I Fall Asleep

**Author's Note:**

> I set out to write an aged-up fluff/smut. This happened instead. I am sorry. Season 2 Mike has too many unresolved issues and I feel Season 4 Mike is going to have even more. With that in mind: Abandonment Issues The Byler Fic!
> 
> Please heed the tags. Yes, they're underage. No, I'm not describing their underage parts--get outta here. They're babies! Awkward, shy, hormonal babies.

It wasn’t supposed to happen, but it did.

That’s what Mike’s mind keeps throwing out—again and again on repeat, as if it’d solve something. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Yeah, but it did.

He wished he could say he was drunk or high or something. He wished there was an excuse he could come up with, a _reason_ maybe. Instead, his brain is as it was the night before—sober. Though maybe now he has a twinge of a caffeine headache whereas last night he’d been soaring on coffee Will had made while everyone else was asleep. 

They’d mixed it with chocolate milk because it was so bitter and Mrs. Byers would notice if any of the creamer went missing.

Maybe Jonathan had spiked the chocolate milk and didn’t warn them, Mike thought. But no… That wasn’t something he’d do. High schoolers didn’t leave their alcohol in plain sight where their parents or little siblings could get at it. Mike learned that much from Nancy. She hid a huge bottle of some kind of clear alcohol in her dresser. Mike found it on accident when looking for quarters for the arcade—learning the hard lesson that her piggy bank was off limits and too conspicuous the last time he tried.

He’d taken a sip from the bottle, found what was inside to be godawful and not fit for human consumption, and put it back. The chocolate milk and coffee had tasted _nothing_ like that.

Mike shuffled around a little under the blankets, rolling onto his side so his back was to Will. There was movement outside in the hallway, Mrs. Byers shuffling out into the kitchen as she started getting ready for work. It was Saturday, but she worked almost every weekend—unlike Mike’s dad. He _never_ worked weekends—overtime maybe, but never Saturday or Sunday. Sometimes, Mike felt bad for Will because his mom had to work so much. Jonathan had a part-time job, too, leaving Will on his own a lot. Maybe not so much since he’d come home from the hospital—from the Upside Down—but it was happening more and more again. 

Mike was afraid something would happen—something more than what already had. If he lost Will again, he didn’t think he’d ever recover this time. He’d lost too many people in the past year… Will basically twice, El…

Just thinking about it made his heart rate start to spike. 

What if something happened to Lucas? What if Dustin moved away? 

These were thoughts that taunted him day in and day out. What if someone took Eleven away from him again? What if someone took Will? What if Jonathan and Nancy died in a car crash? What if… 

What if, what if, _what if!?_

It did him no good to think about these things, but his brain kicked it up regardless. That was what he’d been going on about last night when everything...happened. 

Mike stared at the closed bedroom door, tears leaking from his eyes and dripping off the side of his nose as he shifted his head on one of Will’s flattened, lumpy pillows. 

They’d played games for hours on Will’s Atari, hopped up on junk food and pizza Jonathan brought them before going off to the movies with Nancy—and the chocolate milk and coffee. Then, after Mrs. Byers said it was time to go to bed (not aware they’d made coffee while she’d been snoozing on the couch after coming home tired from work), they hung out in Will’s room with the door closed just like Nancy and Jonathan were doing. They were just talking at first, gossiping really, about Nancy and Jon, about kids at school. 

They talked about space for a while, laying on their backs on Will’s floor while staring up at the uncovered window. They couldn’t see anything except a reflection of his one, dim lamp, but they imagined they could see the whole Milky Way. 

At some point, probably around the two or three a.m. mark, they ended up laying side-by-side on Will’s bed (because the floor had started to hurt their backs) and talked about...them. Their friendship, what they valued most in each other—really mushy stuff that Mike barely talked about even with El, and she was a girl. _His_ girl.

“Do you remember...on Halloween?” Will said, as if the vague question held enough detail for Mike to give a real answer.

“What do you mean?” Mike asked, arms crossed behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. 

“Well… When I told you about my Now Memories and...and we were talking?”

Of course Mike remembered. It hurt his chest even to think about it and his breath had caught in his throat. He’d been scared of losing Will again then, and he was scared of losing him now. 

“Yeah. Why? Are they happening again?” Mike asked, quickly looking over at him. 

“No. It’s not that,” Will said, still staring up at the ceiling. “Just… I don’t know. I probably shouldn’t say anything.”

“No. Tell me what you mean,” Mike insisted. He kept looking at Will who wouldn’t look at him. He’d been so _scared_ at that point.

Maybe, Mike thought as he now lay there staring at the closed door, that’s what it all boiled down to. He’d been scared. He was always so _scared_ anymore, and angry. He saw how Mrs. Byers cared for Will now after everything—how she always seemed to be one step behind him if they went anywhere, always looking out for him and hugging him more than he wanted. Mike wouldn’t go so far as to say he wanted the same thing from his mom—gross—but to have someone who actually _understood_ would be nice. Nancy had lost her best friend to the Upside Down. Mike couldn’t go to her to vent about missing people who were still with him. That’d make him a jerk. He couldn’t explain any of it to his parents because they might end up tortured in a CIA lab somewhere. Dustin acted like it was all an exciting game or a joke… Lucas, too defensive and all hung up on Max. He didn’t want to burden El…

Mike had all these bad, aching feelings and nowhere to put them—and he was running out of places to hide them. 

One of his few remaining hiding places...was Will. And, Mike knew, at any moment, Will could be taken away again. Maybe by the Upside Down or the government...maybe by a freak accident or an illness. 

He was _scared._ He was tired of being scared, but he was terrified. All the time.

“Will, tell me what you mean,” Mike had pushed. “I’m your best friend. You can tell me anyth—”

“It’s just… I really felt like I could talk to you.”

“You _can._ You _can_ talk to me,” Mike said. 

Will turned to him, eyes rimmed with tears that had Mike’s heart beating even harder than before. He almost felt like he couldn’t breathe. Whatever Will was going to say, he’d been convinced it’d be something bad. The Mind Flayer was back. He was in pain again. Something—anything awful.

“I just don’t want to lose you,” Will said, his voice a shaky whisper.

“You _won’t._ And if you did, you’d find me again anyway, right? Because we’re best friends.” He was babbling a little, because he didn’t know if Will meant lose him as a friend or lose him to the Upside Down. Mike spent a lot of time thinking about all the ways you could lose someone and not know if they were gone for good. It was impossible for him to guess which one Will meant.

“Promise?” Will asked, still bleary-eyed. 

“Promise.”

“No matter what?” Will was breathing hard, like he was fighting to keep back more than just tears. Whatever secret he was harboring was a big one—a heavy one—and it scared Mike so bad that he felt like he was going to start crying, too.

“No matter what,” he said, swallowing hard as Will rolled onto his side and faced him. 

“On Halloween you said...crazy together,” Will said, sniffling. 

“Right. Crazy together,” Mike repeated, nodding. It was going to be the Upside Down. He just knew it. Whatever the secret was, it was going to be the Upside Down and Will was in danger again and Mike couldn’t _handle that again._ He was going to _break._

“I… I know it’s dumb and it’s stupid,” Will said, looking down at his knees—or maybe Mike’s knees—where they were inches apart on the twin-sized bed. “But I kind of hoped...I kind of thought that maybe you meant… That you meant me and you together,” the last sentence seemed to come rushing out with the last of the air in Will’s lungs. His face started to burn a dark red so quickly that Mike thought something was wrong with him, then he realized Will had just succumbed to his tears and was crying. 

For a minute, Mike was just silent—waiting for Will to say more. But he didn’t. He just left it there and seemed more and more upset when Mike didn’t answer. 

“I—Will, it’s okay. What do you mean? I-I don’t understand what you mean.” His voice had been a little frantic, maybe a little loud. He really hoped Mrs. Byers hadn’t heard—or that Jonathan and Nancy (gross) hadn’t heard and would come to check on them.

“Like you and El. Like Jonathan and Nancy. _Together.”_ The word came out a sob and Will sat up, covering his face and scrubbing at his eyes with his fingers. “I’m _sorry.”_ Sorry he said it? Sorry he felt that way? Sorry he’d started to cry—or that his crying had made Mike’s eyes start to water?

Mike wanted to ask him, but nothing came out. 

Together? Like him and El? 

Like Nancy and Jonathan? (Gross.)

“Oh,” Mike said, his chest tightening up for a different reason now. He thought about Troy, about his dad…about graffiti he’d read and awful things the older kids said about people who—

About people like Will. 

“I’m sorry,” Will repeated, voice choked. “Please—Please don’t hate me, Mike. Please don’t tell my mom. _Please_ don’t tell my mom.” His mom, Mike thought, was the last person in the world who would look at him differently. 

The second to last—well, that’d probably be Jonathan—the third to last, then, was definitely going to be Mike. 

“I-I’m not—I won’t. Will, it’s okay. Promise. I don’t care. Really! I don’t care.” And maybe _that_ that was a lie, because he did care.

He cared a lot. 

“You don’t?” Will asked, looking at him with the same scared, teary-eyed expression as he’d had when he’d started to spill his guts.

“No! Of course not. You’re—You’re my best friend.” Mike didn’t miss the way ‘friend’ made Will flinch, even just slightly. “I’d never hate you, Will. I...” 

I love you?

But that was gross—and wimpy. Maybe he did love Will, in some way, like he loved his mom or his dad or...Nancy. He guessed, if he had to look at it like that, he loved Dustin and Lucas, too. They were his best friends and he more than just ‘liked’ them. But he didn’t _like_ like them… Not like he did El. 

But if he didn’t say it, was Will going to disappear? Maybe he’d just stop hanging out with him. Maybe Will would be upset at him and not talk to him anymore. After all, Mike was the one who’d said _crazy together_ and got Will thinking that way. He didn’t mean it in that way—or, at least he didn’t think he did. 

If El weren’t there, he rushed to ask himself, would he have rather gone to the Snow Ball with Will? If Will were a girl and they were allowed to go together? Mike really thought it over.

Well, he’d rather have gone with Will as a girl than Dustin or Lucas. 

“You mean it?” Will asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, of course I mean it.”

Mike, even now, doesn’t really understand how it happened. He panicked, he guessed. Will asked him something and then something more and Mike found himself saying what he thought he needed to in order to preserve their friendship. At some point, the thought entered his head that people you turned down for dates didn’t get to be your friend anymore. You lose them as friends because you rejected them and hurt their feelings. He thought about Steve and Nancy—how they barely talked even when they ran into each other. He didn’t want that to happen to him and Will. 

Mike didn’t want to lose Will again. He didn’t want to lose _any more people._

“If El didn’t come back…do you think you and me...maybe...” Mike wouldn’t describe him as bold, but Will had struck him where it hurt the most. What would it hurt, he’d thought, to just say ‘maybe’? El was back now and he was taken, so that would be the end of it, right? They could still be friends because Will knew Mike wasn’t rejecting him—someone had just gotten to him first.

Mike had backed himself into a very narrow corner, and Will—whether he meant to or not—had him pinned. 

Will asked him something, Mike fumbled through an answer—about to cry because he was scared and hurt and trapped—and then he was being kissed. He squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself to pretend it was El. He didn’t want to lose Will. If he had to do this to keep his best friend because he’d said something stupid and got Will’s hopes up, he would do it. It was just a kiss.

It was just a kiss. 

And another, and another. 

Mike had kissed El once, at the Snow Ball, and had felt so electrified—felt butterflies in his stomach that lasted for hours. 

With Will, it was different. The terror faded away, the panic bled away to numbness—at least as far as his emotions were concerned. Every touch of Will’s mouth against his own felt magnified, each sensation seeming to make Mike’s nerve endings scream. Or sing. He wasn’t sure.

Kissing anyone, he thought, probably felt nice—so long as it was a friend. Kissing Troy wouldn’t be nice. Or Nancy (gross, gross). But kissing Will was...not bad. 

Which was what he said when Will pulled back from him and stared at him. Mike wiped his lips on the back of his hand, feeling how hot and flushed his face was, and said dumbly, “Not bad.” 

“What, you think you could do better?” Will asked, a nervous smile twitching at his lips that seemed somehow caught between and grin and a grimace—like he knew what they were doing was bad, that it was wrong, but hoped Mike didn’t care so he didn’t have to care. 

He was waiting for Mike to kiss him, and each second he looked more nervous than the last. 

What if Mike didn’t kiss him back and Will got embarrassed and told him to get out? What if Mike didn’t kiss him back and then Will got scared and told the others that Mike had _kissed him first_ and the whole party kicked him out? Mike didn’t want to lose his whole party. He didn’t want to lose all his friends.

He didn’t want to lose _any more people._

So he forced himself to sit upright and to lean in and kiss Will the way he’d kissed El. He kept his eyes scrunched shut, and for all he knew Will did the same. 

At first, it was just dry, chapped lips pushing together—then Mike, like an idiot, blurted out that he heard real kissing meant you had to use your tongue. And he didn’t know why he said it—whether to make himself seem more willing, to make himself seem more interested—but it made Will’s eyes light up at the same time as they crinkled with the same boyish disgust Mike was feeling at the thought.

Why were you supposed to kiss with your tongue? Gross! But it was something couples did—real couples—and maybe he could...practice for El with Will and she’d never know but she might be happy with the results. She’d be happy and Will would be happy and Mike would be okay—he’d be okay because no one would _go anywhere._

So they kissed and made their tongues touch. Mike didn’t know how long it went on or why it lasted until his lips felt like he’d been punched. They got better at it, maybe. They found ways to hold their heads, to move their jaws, to fit their tongues together. 

Will had one hand on Mike’s cheek and he had one hand fisted in the hem of Will’s t-shirt—too scared to touch him. Did doing this make him a fairy? Did it make him deserving of the tortures scrawled on the bathroom stalls? He didn’t _hate_ it. At first, he pretended it was El, but then he started getting used to the idea that it was Will. It was his best friend and that was okay—because if this was what his best friend needed to stay friends with him, Mike guessed it wasn’t the worst price to pay. 

(He hadn’t realized he’d hate himself for it in the morning.)

Mike slowly found little noises escaping his throat, making him more and more aware of the sounds Will was making—shrill and soft, muffled against Mike’s sore lips. Soon, Will’s other hand was cupping his face as well and he’d pushed really, really close. Mike fumbled to keep his balance and ended up with his hands on Will’s hips—a rush of heat going up and down his entire body. 

It wasn’t anything he’d ever felt before. He tried to pull back, but Will just pushed in closer until his front was pushed against Mike’s front. They were still kissing and Will was still making those little noises back in his throat, but their hips had gotten involved somehow. 

Will was rocking against him and Mike was holding him in place there without meaning to. Mike was moving his hips, too, and a rush of shame and fear coursed through him in time with the little sparks of pleasure. 

They didn’t take their clothes off or anything, at least not until they changed into pajamas. And even then, Will kept his back turned while Mike slipped out of his underwear, mortified by the weird, sticky mess he’d made. He knew it was supposed to be normal or something, but it’d never happened to him before...and for Will to have been the reason...

The thought ran circles around his head, even as he was self-consciously shuffling under the blankets with Will and the light was turned off. His sleeping bag was still in a crumpled mess on the floor, but he guessed he wouldn’t be needing it. He’d never...slept beside anyone before. Not like this, anyway. They were so close they were almost touching on the narrow mattress, but Mike felt like there was as much distance between them now as the Earth and the moon.

Though when Will started to hug him, one arm weaving over his side and hooking around to his chest, Mike felt...secure. He felt safe in a way he hadn’t in a very, very long time. Will loved him—whether he loved Will or not. He could feel it all around him, just as real and palpable as the soft blanket they were both laying under. Mike had felt safe, and then he’d fallen asleep.

Now, awake, he felt raw and terrified and sickened with himself.

_I did something bad,_ Mike thought as he lay there, crying and staring at Will’s closed bedroom door, listening to Mrs. Byers turn on the TV. If his parents found out, they’d hate him. If his friends found out, they’d be really upset—they might even hate him, too. Because of what he did, because he was supposed to be dating El. If she… What if she “visited” last night and saw everything? She’d be so hurt she might not ever talk to him again and he’d _just_ gotten her back! All he’d wanted was to keep Will and now he felt like he’d lost everyone he’d ever cared about. _I did something really bad._

More tears fell as a ragged sob tore from his throat, waking Will who shifted around in the sheets to sit up. 

“Mike?”

_I did something really, really bad._

And there wasn’t a single soul he could tell.

**Author's Note:**

> COVID-19 took both my jobs. Comments are my food and pay my bills.
> 
> Okay, not really, but I appreciate them.


End file.
